Woks on MacOS? How?

[shadowfax]

Hi,

I don't know much about AutoIt. If I shall confess the firts time I heard about it was while looking at your source, so I'm a bit lost.

For what I've seen inside the package this project uses several exe files and a DLL. How do you manage to make this work on MacOS? Does ChunkVNC relay on external software (Something like Wine on Linux)? I'm a bit lost here.

I was looking forward making a remote support server stripping out everything that seems useless for a reverse connection from UltraVNC and building the GUI with something that supported multiplatform compiling (such as wxWidget). But this certainly sounds interesting.

What I'm looking for on the server side is easy:

• Possibility to download the configuration file using HTTP. Allowing to change the repeater/viewer IP address, and alowing the configuration file to set the repeater ID if any. This would allow a PHP script to take care of the configuration and, since the repeater is not running on High Availability (No money to take away most of the SPOF) I could use a hosting service to redirect the server.
• With the HTTP download system the server could download the appropiate language file. It could request one, or just by setting the language header to the OS language a PHP script could decide which language to use. This makes the executable download lighter and therefore faster.
• A small configuration file included in the binary download. If the http fields are filled in it tries the downloads mentioned before, else it uses its own configuration. Besides allowing to disable HTTP downloads it takes care if the HTTP server is down (strange on a hosting service but possible)... And it loads the defaults internal language.
• Generate a unique semirandom ID to the server in case no fixed ID has been asigned in the configuration file (Either the one included or the one downloaded from HTTP).

Would ChunkVNC do this already?

Best regards

[B]

The Mac support is really a different package / wrapper from what I understand. It's described a bit in the documentation on the web site. Compare also against similar Mac packaging in the Gitso project.

The php-based web on-the-fly compiling is supported by at least a couple of projects -- see http://www.robplatt.com/index.php/2010/ ... -repeater/

ChunkVNC might have something approaching that in its next release, but I don't think that's a current goal of supercoe's.

You might find [topic=17843][/topic] helpful....

No, mainly because the Mac version has nothing to do with the AutoIt programming language (AutoIt creates InstantSupport.exe). It's also very difficult to create Mac disk images in Windows without a 3rd party tool such as TransMac.

[supercoe]

Correct, the Mac InstantSupport is a completely separate package of the following software. It's basically Karl's excellent x11vnc project and a compiled shell script. I did it this way for easier porting to Linux but never finished the Linux project.

If you have a Mac (or OSX in a VM in my case) just look at the SRC.zip in the mac directory. The readme will explain how to compile, it's trivial really.

The work that has been done on the next release is similar to what you're looking for but not exact. ID management is a big part, I'm just going about it in a different way (not http).

[shadowfax]

Just one question: Is X11VNC statically linked? I know under Debian (Linux) it has several dependencies such as libvncserver and libvncclient.

I would also like to comment out why I was thinking of HTTP, since it really has further uses I find really useful (But I could be mistaken). Just the idea I had in mind:

A Single Click application could download the configuration file from HTTP/HTTPS, allowing the technical support to change the configuration through a web page (PHP script for example). Therefore, if the repeater fails while the user is abroad he can chage the IP address to point to a local repeater (or a listaning viewer) on his PC. Maintaining High Availability for a repeater is expensive, however, most HTTP hosting services would maintain High Availability for their servers, therefore we could redirect the Single Click application simply adding a new IP in an HTML Form.

If the HTTP server is able to feed the configuration file to the SingleClick application it could generate random IDs that could be stored on a database (MySQL, Postgress, or a plain file). This would allow technical support to know when a Single Click application has logged in and which repeater ID it is using.

Implementing a Java Viewer, ActiveX Viewer,... on the web page could allow direct access to the SingleClick application. Just selecting the repeater ID from a list (As stated before, they can be registered in a database). This gives similar functionality to paid application like NTR Support.

When a technician logs to the web site (Using sessions for example), the configuration file could be builded dynamically showing only online operators (With their respective IP addresses). If no online operator is available the configuration file would have no operator so an alert can be shown to the user... Further more, it could include a message from the server telling the user wha to do. For example: "No operator is online, Please call XXX-XXX-XXX", or "Working hours are from XX:XX to XX:XX" (Message defined on the HTTP server)... Or even send an SMS to a technician stating that someone needs help (Some Service providers allow SMS to be sent ffrom their servers).

When there is only one oprator the connection can be initiated inmediatelly. When there is more than one operator the user can choose from the online operators (as stated above) or the HTTP script could send only one operator to the user (Depending on how many active session the operators have). In other words, it could redirect the connection to the operator with less work. Even an operator could mark himself as busy so the script wouldn't add him to the available operators.

Since HTTP is a really simple protocol, even the repeater could communicate with the HTTP server sending aditional information. For example, when a client disconnects in order to delete him/her from the database file.

So, IMHO, it would add a great new range of features to the SingleClick application as many decisions can be taken form the scripts loaded at the HTTP server.

Once again, this are only some thoughts why I'm persuing HTTP configuration files... In orther to make decisions with PHP on the server (Any scripting language should work).

[B]

That all sounds intriguing, and I agree that http is nearly universally useful as a "lingua franca". But I wonder, how is using a web server to provide on the fly configuration file updates significantly different from having a web server provide on the fly PACKAGES, which is what the other two projects I linked are doing?

Sure, the updated configuration files are smaller, but when the whole package is under 5 MB, is that a big difference? How often are repeater addresses really going to change?

Maybe I'm still missing some of the larger scope of your idea...

[shadowfax]

Maybe I'm not getting the point of web server providing packages on the fly.

When I read that the web server provided packages on the fly I guessed some additional tools should be installed on the server. If this is so, most of the hosting providers won't allow you to install aditional software or even make use of it in case it was installed. Hosting my own HTTP server brings back the same problem as with the repeater: No high availability. If my server goes down, I'm down. If I'm away from the server there is a chance I can't get it up an running... however, since I have a hosting provider with high availability I can make use of the HTTP server changing the configuration file an redirecting that user to the IP address of my laptop with 3G connection. This brings some kind of inexpensive high availability.

On the other hand, I'm not only talking about sending the user against a repeater, but redirecting the user. That is, if I don't have a repeater at that moment, I could redirect the user directly against the viewer. In this case the HTTP server is acting as an "interchange" (Don't know if that's technical or not) server. In some way the HTTP server would be acting as a repeater and sending me the user right into the viewer but without the repeater. More or less like P2P.

If the web server provides the packages on the fly, I guess the other things as saving the Repeater ID is possible. However, to do so I guess you need the installed software I mentioned earlier.